Playing Games
by Nins
Summary: A new, ruthless, cruel, and slightly more cheerful Joker returns to terrorize Gotham and wreak havoc among the citizens, but someone else returns as well to thank him for a favor. Sort of AU, Joker/Rachel.
1. Playing with Strangers

A/N: Hi, all. This is my first Dark Knight fanfic, though I really am a big fan. I've really wanted to submit something here for a long time. Honestly, I've grown tired of the usual formulaic Joker/OC's that have been going around in this category (really though, I think there have been some early good ones), so I decided to submit something featuring a sort-of favorite pairing I think is a tad underused. Enjoy.

Disclaimer: The Dark Knight belongs to Christopher Nolan and Warner Brothers. Batman belongs to DC Comics. I don't own either; if I did I'd be one hundred billion zillion dollars richer. :(

* * *

**Playing Games - Chapter 1**

Matt and Freddie were the best of friends. Besides both being twenty-one-year-old first year high school dropouts, they had a lot in common. Their interests included drinking, stealing, visiting strip clubs and aimlessly roaming the Gotham alleyways with which they were comfortably familiar. They had every street name and location memorized. Every dusty little street in between the gleaming office buildings had a specific placement of old dumpsters, backdoors and fences. Every night they'd stroll casually through the alleys, rubbing their sleeves into the faded graffiti, throwing cans at sleeping bums and urinating wherever they damn well pleased. Gotham wasn't so perfect after all.

_Wilson, could you send another police car over here? I'm on Haines Street. Yeah. Between the Starbucks and Pasquale's Bistro._

Matt and Freddie stumbled into an alleyway late in the night, laughing and stopping to lean against the wall every few moments. Freddie dropped his beer can onto Matt's foot, causing him to slip and land uncomfortably on the ground. This resulted in a punch and various swear words, but they continued on their journey. Winter was just beginning to arrive in the city, and they scared off a few street children so that they could have the barrel fire all to themselves. It cast a warm, orange light against the cement of the buildings, but also revealed a bundled up figure curled snugly beside a pile of trash.

_Not in front, Wilson. In between. To hell with your Christmas shopping. This is important._

"_Maaaaaatt_, you said you scared them _all _off," Freddie slurred as he took a wobbly step towards it.

"I _did_, I did," his best friend replied, still focusing both his eyes and hands to the heat of the fire.

"Then why don'tcha go check if you really did?"

"Why don'tcha go to hell?"

"I'll do just that, but first we got a visitor," Freddie smiled slyly as Matt turned to look. He noticed it, too – a human being swathed in a brown coat and a tattered purple scarf, with clumps of ratty blonde hair poking out at the top. One bare, nearly blue hand hugged his knees to his chest. The other was lost somewhere in the folds of his coat. And for some reason, he didn't seem to shiver an inch in the frigid weather. He was as frozen as the air around him. Matt wrinkled his nose and came nearer to the visitor as well, heavy-lidded and clumsy.

_Nope, not another dealer, Wilson. We got cold, hard murder here._

"Another bum, uh?"

"A damn quiet, un-crazy one."

"You're telling me."

"Hit it with something, Matt."

"Hell no. I don't throw things, you do. I'm a peaceful soldier."

"An' I'm the goddamn _Batman_."

A deep, rumbling groan. The two broke from their spat and returned their gazes to the figure before them. Or was it some sort of sick, distorted laugh?

"Hey, looks like the bum's alive," Freddie said, bending over with his hands on his knees for a closer look.

"Good, now he'll make a sound when we hit 'im," Matt snorted, turning to see if his best friend would either laugh as well or roll his eyes. Unfortunately, his eyes were all of a sudden wide and blank, and he had a large, bleeding hole in his forehead.

As Freddie collapsed lifelessly to the ground, Matt made a weak, horrified cry, jumping backward and nearly falling over. The figure rose up with the gun in his hand, his coat falling slightly down and exposing the ragged, grimy image of some sort of cheap purple suit. The scarf slipped off his shoulders and fell to the ground. What it had wrapped was a face, half-human, half-monster, scarred and infected and semi-caked in some grubby, twisted version of clown makeup. His eyes were sleepless red but with pupils that were unmistakably green. He was something terrifyingly familiar, a blocked out nightmare with the same sort of movement. Twitch, twitch, blink.

"And you won't make a sound at all."

Matt screamed, even when nobody else was there to hear him. He got up to race off to the end of the alleyway, away from the barrel fire and from this freakish killer, nearly tripping over his best friend's corpse in the process. Even at this speed, the killer seemed determined to follow him.

_No, Wilson. Not one dead body. Two._

Bang.

* * *

To the Joker, Gotham seemed like a cold, stingy Scrooge of a city, bah-humbugging the Christmas season as it littered the news channel with countdowns and gift suggestions. While most people would carol from door to door and give each other presents and throw tinsel all over that ugly ghastly tree in their house, Gotham liked staying official and businesslike, with all this silly worrying about mob leaders and dark knights and district attorneys. Disgusting, the Joker thought. He wanted the holidays to be _happy _days.

The city always managed to find a way to ruin the Christmas spirit. The Joker was excited; he'd sewn himself a handsome Santa Claus hat (he was a wizard at the sewing machine, that Joker), strung wire lights around his room and tacked some stockings to the wall. He even ran a finger over his lipstick and rubbed it on his scarred cheeks for a light, rosy glow. Of course, the Arkham orderlies seemed royally ticked about this show of Christmas, sticking him in a straitjacket and throwing him in that boring white padded room _again. _The Joker sighed at the memory; Gotham citizens never wanted to celebrate. He was glad he'd finally escaped that stupid asylum.

One thing that cheered him up, however, was sitting in the streets downtown and watching the late-nighters and bar-hoppers stagger by. They never really seemed too friendly, but at least they'd mumble a "murry crusmuss" back whenever this weird brown-coat-purple-scarf stranger greeted them politely. Those who didn't only made him feel depressed, so he just decided to stab them and give them a happy holiday smile with the aid of a rusty potato peeler he'd saved from making latkes in Arkham (the Jewish orderlies deserved a Christmas, too).

Late that night he was sitting in an alleyway, where he grew tired waiting for other people and went to take a nap. Unfortunately, this was rudely interrupted by some loud young men who were toying with the idea of throwing something at him. Normally the Joker liked people as unserious as they were, but, really now, they disturbed him from a nap. That wasn't very nice of them. So, desiring to sort this out without a brawl, a highlight of his mission for a merry Gotham Christmas was shooting two men in an alleyway just in the onset of winter.

That night, it began to snow.


	2. Playing with Fire

A/N: Hi again. Sorry for the delay of the next chapter, I was busy with the onslaught of homework after returning to school from Christmas break. This chapter might be a tad bit boring because it's mostly exposition/flashbacks, but hopefully by the end you'll figure out that it's getting to the exciting part. :D

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**Playing Games - Chapter 2  
**

Most scars are permanent. Rachel Dawes learned that the hard way.

She gazed out the window, its blinds drawn open, in the dimly lit room, her body seated but painfully rigid. It was finally beginning to snow in Gotham, though everyone stuffily treated the flecks of white more like bothersome flies. She didn't like the snow that much either, but she appreciated having something to stare at during late nights in the DA office. In the midst of the darkened clouds and city lights she could catch a hint of her reflection in the glass. Rachel cringed; she hated how hideously short her hairstyle was. She'd begged the surgeon for a way to regain what she had lost, for a sort of hair shaft replacement operation or something, _anything _like that. When the doctor suggested wigs, she gave up and walked out of the clinic.

Her hair was still as dark dirt brown as it had been before, but the strands were all short little pricks that reached only to a few inches above her ear. Below that was a scratched, lumpy mass of faint-red flesh, going down to her back, with ratty stitches trailing mazes across her skin. It didn't sting as much anymore, but the memory of charred flesh, of fire blazing on the parts of her body, still made her nerves pulsate in phantom pain.

"Third-degree, on her head, neck and back," the doctor coughed out when she was lying facedown on a hospital bed. It wasn't something they usually did to patients, but with Rachel it was needed. "Fragments of the cartilage on her right ear have been burned off. The fire was a bit far, so none of her bones are damaged, but she'll need skin grafts. Alert the surgery wing."

What followed after resulted in the appearance she had now, with a mangled type of buzz cut and a half-formed right ear. She felt miserable about it for the first several weeks, hiding in her apartment and avoiding the bathroom mirrors. When she was considerably healed, duty forcibly called her back to the District Attorney office. She did less and less work than before.

Her office was sleek, a straight-lined design with a wooden desk and a shelf neatly filled with folders and books. She felt like the least perfect little decoration in it, with her lopsided haircut and uneven skin. Even her expensive black suit felt wrong against her, like it belonged on someone better, more attractive.

Carelessly, she played with the single-diamond ring on her finger, turning it around to watch the little light there was reflect off the miniscule stone set into it. What she never told anyone – the colleagues who asked, the few friends who swooned over it – was that the ring was no precious metal, nothing salvaged from the deepest caves in the highest mountains, and just an old, over-rubbed silver dollar melted into a wedding band. The secret somehow made her feel beautiful again, but the feeling was for her alone.

In the morning she would pick up her suitcase and walk to work, a disfigured image of the work force. She was scarred by fire, a walking warning of what would happen if a child played with Mommy's stove. Worst of all, she was a reminder – a watermark of the chaos left behind by the eternally looming Joker.

Even the messages of him being safely locked away in Arkham never helped her sleep at night; instead she would toss and turn like she always did, trying to find a side of herself on the bed that wouldn't hurt her scars. Wherever she went, it could be the stares, the sights, the buzz of the news announcing this or that about the Joker that made the burns sting.

It was then that Rachel Dawes learned that most scars were permanent.

"Miss Dawes," she heard a feminine voice call from behind her. "Excuse me, Miss Dawes?"

Rachel realized that her back and chair were turned away from whoever had come to the door, leaving her burns perfectly visible. She quickly swerved her chair around, twisting the ring on her finger. "Viv, I'm sorry. I wasn't paying attention."

Standing there was a young woman, black-haired, brown-eyed and wrapped in jeans and a sweater. She rested an elbow on the doorknob, and her other arm held on to the doorframe. Vivienne was pleasant, somewhat laid back, a scurrying mouse of a girl labeled by most at the office as Everybody's Assistant. She served the coffee, recorded the meetings, and told what Smith told Jackson to tell Perez to tell whoever.

"Miss Dawes, I'm sorry," Vivienne stood up straight and brushed a stray black lock off her face. "Your doctor just called; he wants a checkup with you tomorrow, just to see how you're doing. He says there's a pill that can help with your-"

"Tell him I don't want any more damn pills," snapped Rachel. Vivienne froze, and shifted her eyes here and there to avoid eye contact.

"I'm sorry, I don't know about… about…" she trailed off, before biting her lip.

"It's alright, Viv, I'll take care of it myself," Rachel shook her head, waving a hand to dismiss her.

"Yes, Ma'am," Vivienne answered, before retreating to the dimness of the outer hallway. Not a moment after, she quickly jumped back in. "Do you want me to get you any coffee, Mrs. Dent?"

"Well, alright," Rachel shrugged, and absentmindedly turned back to the window. She heard Vivienne's footsteps fade away, before it was only her and the outside muffle of city noise again. Sighing, she stood up and limped over to the window.

Darkened clouds, city lights, all the same. She saw her own face, carved faintly into the glass, once again. From the front she looked a little more normal, maybe like a recovering cancer patient. Frowning, she reached up to touch the dark circles under her eyes gingerly, to trace her fingers over the light wrinkles she could _swear _were starting to form. Slowly, she realized that her whole hand was covering the left half of her own face.

_Two-Face_, she could still hear the colleagues sneering inside her head. _You heard? Two-Face is running for DA. Fifty bucks Worthington will run him into the ground. _At first she'd ignored the comments running through the building, hoping that the other candidates were receiving a fair amount of bashing as well, but that was all she heard for the rest of the campaign – _Two-Face. _Even Bruce seemed to be rather against him, but she figured that the fact she was dating Harvey contributed greatly to his hostility.

A long time after, the polls shot up in Harvey's favor as his numerous promises seemed to match that of the needs of Gotham. Before that, only Rachel had been on his side.

It was fire, she remembered, fire that burned him, but didn't kill him. Rachel had seen him at the hospital when he was still unconscious, half his face masked and bandaged in sterile white. She was there, tears streaming down her face, her own scalded head wrapped in gauze. She kissed his face, whispered "yes" in his ear, "my answer is yes". She told him, softly, that they were going to hide her, to protect her from the Joker, but she didn't want to live without him. His face, pale and nearly lifeless, one half reduced to a blackened core beneath a ghostly sheet, remained unmoving. That was the last she saw of him, before she heard the news of his going insane, his murder of five people, his abrupt death. She didn't understand. She knew he was a good man.

_His face. His face. His face. _A frenzy of words swarming through her head. She was about to explode. In a rare stray from character, she quickly threw open the window as the sky brought down a new heap of snow.

Rachel shivered, as she played with her ring. It was absolutely frigid, but she felt a little more relaxed than before. The Gotham skyline blended in with the rest of the atmosphere, dark and watery blue. The snow was like moving city lights. Feeling free, Rachel leaned forward, as she looked out. There was a Starbucks on the first floor of the building; she figured that maybe she'd go there later for coffee that was better than Vivienne's. She regained contentment, absentmindedly watching the white flakes brush by the ring she was twisting on her finger, watching it move up to her fingertip – then watching it slip and fall, twinkling amidst the snow, hitting the side of the building a few times, and disappear in the darkness at the bottom. She stared at it for a long, long time.

"…Shit."

Rachel swiftly closed the window and limped out of her District Attorney office, into the dark hallway. She realized then and there that it was very, very late, with the only light on being in the restroom. She cursed a little more for losing track of time, making her way to the elevators.

_Elevators in function 7:00AM-10:00PM. _

She checked her watch. _12:47. _Sighing, Rachel moved away from the elevators and began the long journey down the stairs beside them.


	3. Playing with Shiny Things

A/N: I apologize profusely for the lack of updates. I was actually planning to submit this last Sunday, except silly old wouldn't let me log in. Anyway, exams are drawing near, and after that is vacation so hopefully I'll be able to churn the chapters out way faster. Thanks all, and enjoy.

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**Playing Games - Chapter 3**

It was _funny _how they outlined the positions of corpses on the ground, as if it were a memory the investigators wanted to keep forever. It was jagged lines of white set to the cold gray cement, and surrounded by police tape yellow. The Joker didn't _get _police tape. Really, it was mind-bendingly easy to get past it - you just had to gnaw your way through.

He bent down to inspect the outlines, his vision slightly blurred by the ever present snowfall. The first body he had shot was bent over, hands laid out in front; the other was all splayed out as if it were dancing (it was always nice to see a little cheerfulness in dead people). The Joker pulled his coat around himself a little tighter, missing the luxury of barrel fires. There wasn't enough snow to cover the ground and conceal the outlines, but there was enough to make him feel cold as hell- "Ha ha ha, get it? _Get it?_"

_Merry Christmas_. He decided to politely greet the chalk lines before stepping over the remaining police tape to go on his way and find some other form of amusement, maybe something to eat. He didn't want to try Pasquale's Bistro in the adjacent building – Franco-Italian? It sounded like the silliest ever word combination since Cosby-Hitler (boy, the Arkham orderlies sure didn't like _that _joke), not to mention he _hated _Italian food. Starbucks, which was on the bottom floor of the District Attorney Office building, was probably crowded. The Joker was not a people person.

The Joker looked up; winter wind sifted through the white-and-red cracks on his face. He squinted through the fog to see – something, something strange – near the opening of the alleyway. It was the shape of a person, actually, just slouched and slightly limping as it walked away from him. It was almost funny. Curious as he always was, the Joker crept towards it to follow.

The figure was a vision in a suit and pencil skirt, and painful-looking designer shoes that probably weren't even out yet in the rest of the country. It bent down to pick something shiny off the floor (_Finally, someone like me, _the Joker thought), making a wounded-sounding groan as it straightened itself. More interested than before, he crept ever nearer.

What a dream! What a beauty! Standing here was a woman, a nice-looking woman, in fact, clothed in Christmas black. She was lovely and mysterious; mostly bald head bowed down to inspect her sparkly new toy, a partly gnarled right ear and this amazing, _amazing _red lump of scars trailing down her neck. She was cream of the crop, top of the hill bubble wrap pop _perfect. Hello, beautiful._

"Shit," she whispered to herself, in a voice parched and unnatural. "…scratched."

What a picky woman – disapproving of shiny things with scratches on them. Nevertheless, the back of her was beautiful.

The Joker walked even closer, before accidentally kicking a haphazardly discarded beer can on the cement ground. Instantly the lady whirled around, her hazel eyes wide with horror, before letting loose a magnificent, violently loud scream up into the chasm of the winter sky (He swore that voice could shake the heavens).

Springing quickly into action, the Joker lurched forward and covered her sweet, wide mouth with his left gloved hand. He turned to get a grip of her entirety, placing his head on her shoulder while holding her arms back with his free hand. Now she was making strange, horrified sounds through his fingers, shaking and sobbing and actually making him feel kind of bad.

"Shush shush shush," he whispered into her deformed ear, liking the contact with an actual human being (before that, the only organisms that were willing to go near him were rats. Dead rats, that is) and making the most of it. "It's okay, it's okay. It's not _that _scratched."

The lady unleashed a new tirade of muffled cries, straining to escape from his locked down clasp. From what the Joker could see, tears were already streaming down her cheeks and ruining his favorite leather gloves. Now _that_, he didn't like about her.

"Okay, okay then, stop wetting up my gloves, ya might shrink them," he sighed, tightening his clutch a little to threaten her. "I'll let you go if you promise not to scream or anything."

Seeming to accept these terms, the sobs died down a little, before they came to a complete stop. Soon there was zero noise, the way the Joker liked it. Satisfied, he let go of the woman, who promptly fell to the ground. It broke one of her heels, but she stayed where she was, breathing low and hard.

"Aw, ma'am, did I _scare _you?" the Joker asked, sympathetically. "That's alright, this phobia with clowns is pretty common nowadays. It's just that you were screaming so _loud_ and I was scared we'd wake up any bums that are asleep in this area."

Slowly, her head turned around to meet his gaze, and at once the Joker realized who it was all along.

The owner of the gnarled right ear, of the unnaturally short hair, of the red mass of lumps and stitches was District Attorney Rachel Dawes, the ever lovely, the ever radiant (couldn't believe how much prettier she was now). And hanging loosely on the tip of her finger was that strange shiny thing.

"G-God…" she stammered out, fear still etched over her face (wow, her eyes really accented her hair. At least, what she still had of it). "God… it's _you._"

"Oh, don't say _you _like it's a bad thing," said the Joker, casually. "…Though if you're the classical type, you can always use 'thou'."

"God," Rachel repeated, her voice cracking in anger. "I never thought I'd see you again."

"Hey, I'm always around," he answered cheerfully, lifting his hands up along with his shoulders. "Don't believe those silly Gotham Times headlines. I ain't tucked away neat and tidy back in Arkham. That place is _dead_."

"But-" she stuttered, forgetting to pick herself off the freezing ground. "But… how…"

The Joker shrugged. "It was easy. I laid down on my cell floor – didn't move an inch for twenty-four hours – when they came in to check my pulse, I killed 'em all."

He beamed in gruesome pride, hoping it would impress her. Rachel made a sound in her throat, and then spat in disgust. Hastily, she got up off the pavement and dusted off the snowflakes, her Christmas black skirt ruined. Once standing, she stared frostily at the Joker, breathing hard and her face nearly red with hatred (the lady seemed hard to please).

"Stay _away _from me," she whispered, low and cold and sharp. Lovely lovely, the lady was just another icy li'l gift from winter. And with that, she slid that shiny ring of hers back into its rightful place and turned in a huff to march back inside her cozy District Attorney Office building.

"Aw, now, now," the Joker said in ridiculous mock despair, taking a few steps towards her. "Need we continue the grudge? Just tell me what's wrong with me. I can _change_. Wha- What is it? It's the scarf, isn't it? Too purple? Oh, it's the potato peeler-"

"Shut _up!_" cried Rachel, whirling around. She clenched her fists in anger. "You will leave me _alone_, understand? I want nothing to do with you. Nobody wants anything to do with you. Batman showed the city the _freak_ you are. In fact, I'm going up to call Arkham _right now-_"

Annoyingly, Rachel Dawes was immediately interrupted by a hand wrapping around her scratched-scarred neck and smashing her onto the hard brick wall of the office building. Her wound seared in pain.

"I thought it'd come to this," sighed the Joker, shaking his head as she struggled to breathe. "Look, honey, you're gonna have to listen here. I am _not _going back to Arkham Asylum. I'm going to be a free man, I'm going to do what I want, and I'm going to show all of Gotham what a _freak _the silly prancing Batman really is-"

"Batman is _not_-" Rachel croaked through the little air still remaining in her throat, her hands trying desperately to grab a hold of his. Even in certain death, she was defending other people's lives (what a crazy, pretty woman).

"Oh, Batman is," the Joker replied, near sneering. "Alright, we'll compromise. I'll leave you alone – forever, if need be – I can just go about my business of mob dealers and the Batman, and you can just sit nice and comfy in your DA office and you'll never have to worry your pretty little bald head about it. I won't see you ever again. The scars will be gone." He slowly tightened his grip to show he was serious (the Joker hated using brute force on ladies).

"No…" Miss Rachel forced out, all senses seemingly weakening. Both the cold in the air and the steady loss of oxygen seemed to be killing her. With whatever inkling of power she probably had left within her, Rachel gasped, "_No!_"

Suddenly she was dropped to the ground, the air filling her lungs again and letting the blood return to her cheeks. The Joker watched her breathe hard a few several times, before looking back up at him, scared and unmoving.

"No deal, huh?" he said through stained lips and heavy eyelids. "Well, fine. The Batman can wait for now. But you – oh, you can look forward to seeing me everyday. Every sun and moon and hour, since you refused the offer. And don't even try to contact Arkham – I escaped a million times and I can do it again. And when I do, Rachel Dawes will join Harvey Two-Face Dent in happy Lawyer Heaven. In a very, very painful way. Just you wait. The scars'll come."

Miss Rachel bit her lip, trying to hold back the tears. Poor pretty Rachel – he didn't like doing this to her, but hey, her loss. Feeling lifted of anything on his chest, the Joker happily patted the lady on her head, and turned around to be on his merry Christmas way.

"I'm not leaving old Gotham without my big finish!" he waved his hands in the air and slouched again, sauntering away into the fog as he visualized what was to come.

* * *

Rachel Dawes stared off in his direction, drained of any hope. Exhausted, she rested her head against the wall, hoping that Vivienne would realize she was gone and come looking for her. She'd prayed for a quiet, undisturbed peace after what had happened. It all just wanted to keep coming back to her.

Even without the energy she'd contained only a few minutes ago, the thoughts raced through her head – if she'd done the right thing for herself _or _Bruce. She'd rejected the compromise, if the Joker had ever even meant it, and she had only put her own self in danger. Without a District Attorney, Gotham would have nowhere to turn. The Joker would win either way and she'd be sent to "happy Lawyer Heaven" with her Harvey.

Harvey, Harvey, Harvey. Oh god, if only he were here now. She closed her swollen red eyes and breathed. If only. Everything would be different. Gotham wouldn't have been as cold. And the Joker wouldn't have returned.

_The scars'll come._


	4. Playing with Grownups

_A/N: _Hi again. Now that it's summer over here, I get to be more active in writing, so hurray for me, I guess? Haha. Sorry if the last few chapters have been slow-paced, here I quickened it a bit to match what'll go on in the last half. Wink wink. There a few Arkham flashbacks to go along with it. Enjoy.

* * *

**Playing Games - Chapter 4**

The man in the white coat ran his bony pale fingers through the sheets on his clipboard, eye bags outlined and gray-and-brown hair lit up under the harsh lights. He clicked a pen open with his chin, and scribbled down his notes. The Joker slumped in his seat, growing increasingly bored and tapping his fingers on his own back (the straitjacket was incredibly uncomfortable). He ran his tongue over his dry, clean lips, wishing he remembered which floor tile in his room he'd hidden his makeup under. He planned to reapply it once this was done and over.

"City Hall has zero information on you," the psychiatrist rasped, barely whispered. "No age, no birthplace. We listed your surname as 'unknown', and your given name as 'unknown', too. So basically, we'll have to formally refer to you as Unknown Unknown."

Wheezing, he laughed at his own little joke, while the Joker rolled his eyes in disdain and impatience. He stopped tapping his fingers, and the psychiatrist regained his composure to return to his clipboard.

"It's hard to determine whether you suffer from an illness or not," he continued matter-of-factly, flipping through the pages. "If I could take a guess, I'd say schizophrenia, maybe borderline personality disorder, but… planning all that? Robbing a bank, kidnapping two district attorneys, escaping from a high-security prison, putting the entire city in jeopardy… it doesn't sound like a mentally unhealthy person to me. A psychopathic mastermind is more like it."

"Not too bad," said the Joker apathetically, averting his gaze to stare at the much more interesting blank wall to his left. On the other side was a wide two-way mirror for orderlies to keep cautious watch behind, though it was no high time to smile slickly at his handsome reflection, anyway. _Hello, good-looking. _"But hey, in the long run, everyone gets hurt." (_Geez Louise, I am so bored bored bored so very bored_).

"Your… chaotic tendencies seem to have followed you into Arkham, Mister Unknown," the psychiatrist said, his tone becoming graver. "In the three months you've been here, you've terrorized all the other patients on your floor into panic-induced comas, driven four nurses to quit or change shifts, consumed twenty percent of our medicine supply, and attempted to stab one orderly with a smuggled-in potato peeler. It's no laughing matter, _Joker. _You'll need much more than that straitjacket to restrain yourself."

The Joker's eyes slowly slipped back from the wall to the doctor, with no discernible emotion. The psychiatrist decided to take this as some sort of quiet agreement, and continued to squint down at his own shaky, illegible writing.

"Doctor Harris put you on Trifluoperazine, true? We'll add Perphenazine to the daily dose as well. I can never be too sure with you. Are you doing fine on it?"

"Oh, swell, just swell," the Joker answered, visibly squirming and wriggling in his chair. There was nothing wrong with a little white lie – while the shots were from time to time a tad painful he had no complaints about being forcibly pinned to the floor as three or four orderlies stabbed him with syringes in his fits of uncontrollable laughter. The psychiatrist noticed his moving around, and discreetly scrawled onto his paper a treatment for ADHD.

"I'm pleased you cooperated, 'Joker'. According to the many stories of my colleagues, I'm told it's not something you often do."

"Oh," the Joker flashed him one of his _dashing_ smiles, as his bruised right hand slipped out under his straitjacket to pull a bloody, rusty potato peeler from his pocket. "Is that _all _they told you?"

* * *

Fear seemed to be a common thing in Gotham – besides snootiness, that is. Even in a fully secured work office on the highest floor of the most important building in the city did not stamp out her seemingly indelible paranoia. Any moment, any second, _he _could emerge from the sides or the corners, ready to begin his game of hide and seek. Rachel had both elbows on the desk, one scratching at sleeved skin and the other against her right ear, as she looked out the full-wall window. Background noise usually calmed her down, though Vivienne's endless babbling didn't exactly suffice.

"…weren't in your office more, so I hope you don't mind that I drank your coffee by myself. I figured you'd gone home for the night, though by the looks of it you haven't slept a wink. Are you _sure _you're doing alright, Miss Dawes? I know it's winter – I absolutely hate snow, too – but Christmas is coming, and that should cheer you up at least a _little_. In fact, I can go and make you a cup of coffee right now-"

"Vivienne," Rachel interrupted, putting a hand up. "I need you to do something for me."

"Yes, ma'am?"

"Call… call Commissioner Gordon for me. Just tell him to come here, and that I need him."

"Oh," said Vivienne, sounding unsure. "May I ask why?"

She wasn't going to stop asking till she budged. Rachel sighed. "Just go. Just try."

Vivienne nodded curtly, before turning around to walk out the office.

It was the wrong thing to do. _It was the wrong thing to do! _It was the choice that would get the Joker to terrorize her (right after quickly escaping from Arkham), send her up to happy Lawyer Heaven, and bring the city of Gotham into chaos, all before the year ended. It was her absurd trust in a failing police force and her desperation to get rid of the problem fast as possible that caused it all. _Wrong, wrong, wrong._

With a headache forming, Rachel slowly closed her eyes, running a hand over the tiny brown strands of hair on her head.

* * *

"Suppose you and a friend were on a road trip," the Joker told the stern-faced orderly who was strapping him into a chair. "Mister… Clarkson."

The orderly shot him a silent glare as he removed his nametag from sight, and tightened the straps around him a little more for good measure. The Joker choked a bit from the pulling, but laughed out loud right after.

"Yes... so you and a friend. Now say the car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. You have no repair skills, no toolbox, whatever they use these days. All ya have with ya is a half-empty canteen – half-full if you're optimistic."

He stifled a chuckle as the orderly stuck the remarkably large needle of a syringe into a medicine bottle. It slowly filled with runny, translucent liquid.

"I hope you don't ever repeat your behavior today, _Joker_," Mister Clarkson finally spoke, low and severe.

"Now according to your map the nearest city is several miles away," the Joker cheerily continued his story, oblivious to the advancing of the orderly. "So you and your friend decide to walk there."

Clarkson rolled his eyes, and gave the syringe a very light press to see if anything came out of it. A thin quick fountain of an unidentified drug spurted out from the needle (the Joker loved surprises). "I can't believe they haven't already given you a death sentence. As a result of your actions, three of our cooks have each swallowed a _steak knife. _I don't know how to break this to you, but even _your _magic tricks get old."

"…the catch is, neither of you can get to civilization alive without taking a drink from the canteen," the Joker went on, short snorts and sniggers interrupting his speech every now and then. "If _both _of you drink from it, you both will die. If only one friend drinks from it, that person can survive to reach the city. So what's it gonna be? You gonna be the villain… or the dead guy on Route 41?" Now he was full-on guffawing. Needless to say, it was overwhelmingly irritating.

"I'm not sure if you'll get any water, but you _will _get all of _this_," Clarkson plunged the needle right into the Joker's arm, as his guttural laughter filled the Arkham hallways.

* * *

Rachel opened her eyes. The digital clock on her table had magically jumped from 5:00 to 6:00. _Damn it. _She proceeded to remove her head from the desk and look around for a sign that the police had arrived.

Vivienne hadn't returned or tried to wake her up, meaning she probably never even tried to call. After a short string of internal swearing, Rachel remembered she had her own phone, anyway. She picked it up; she'd made up her mind about it and she was going to ring up Gordon, no matter what.

"Miss Dawes, Miss Dawes!" Vivienne came running, panting with her hair messed and looking like she'd just run twenty flights. "The police are-"

She stopped mid-sentence, her eyes bloodshot and wide in pure, absolute, unadulterated terror.

"Not now, Viv, I have to-" Rachel noticed the absence of a dial tone with the receiver pressed against her injured ear. She pulled the entire machine closer to realize that the wire was clipped.

"Phone services. A nightmare, huh?" a familiar voice croaked behind her.

Before Vivienne could release the classic shriek, two bullets entered her forehead, sending her to collapse on the spot. Panicking, Rachel jumped out of her seat and turned around to the person behind her. There he was in all his glory, a pale white face of black eye sockets and wide red lips, the smoke from the semi-automatic Beretta 92 in his hand lingering triumphantly in the air.

Screams came from the hallway a few seconds after. Strangling would have been a more conveniently quiet course, Rachel thought. Now she was standing in her District Attorney office with an extremely wanted criminal psychopath, two bullets embedded in a secretary's skull, and through the full-wall window she could see a third of the city police force heading into the building for _her._

"They… they couldn't have… with the security guard at the entrance-"

"Trust me, beautiful, I got here first – that guard is stowed away nice and safe in a dumpster."

"The guards're all coming up here," stated a scream from outside her office. Next were the sounds of a dozen leather designer shoes, pounding their way out of the floor and down the stairs.

"Come with me!" Rachel said quickly, grabbing the Joker's wrist. Swiftly as she did, the Joker tugged back and pointed the gun at her head.

"I believe we had a deal, gorgeous," he whispered roughly, pressing the end of the pistol against the inside of her ear. "I get arrested, you get killed."

_No way out no way out no way out. _Rachel felt the words rush through her head as she squeezed her eyes shut, and in a remarkable display of the infinite possibilities of natural human instinct she created a split-second decision.

"I'm _not _turning you over," Rachel answered heatedly, turning her head away from the gun. "Now _come with me!_"

She pulled the Joker's hand as she ran out the door (stepping over Vivienne, while the Joker treated her as part of the floor). From a coat stand, she grabbed some stranger's dark blue jacket and threw the hood over the Joker's head, heading straight for the door to the emergency exit.

"The police must be using the elevator," she hastily explained as she pushed it open. "And there are security cameras in there anyway."

The building's emergency exit was composed of flights and flights of zigzagging stairs, going through about twenty stories. Rachel took one limping step and nearly tumbled down the rest, even with holding on to the banister for support. It was going to be a long walk.

Then suddenly she felt an arm wrap around her waist and, uncomfortably carried like a wooden log, the Joker repeatedly jumped over the rails of the banister, landing on the next lower flight of stairs. Whilst stifling her horrified screams, Rachel did not enjoy being vigorously and dangerously rocked back and forth in a situation like this, she had to admit that it was much, much faster.

The Joker made one last leap and landed on the ground floor, and dropped Rachel to the tiles. That part of the emergency stairs had two doors – the one leading into the main room or the one going out to the alley. Before she could catch her breath and get up, she spotted the Joker locking the main door; the point of a gun was once against shoved into her back. She decided she had to get used to it.

"Well aren't you a piece of work, gorgeous?" he said, breathing lowly and heavily as she was. "Gee, I hate to treat a lady like this, 'specially when she looks like you, but you see, I have no idea where you're leading me right now. Maybe you're telling the truth – you could go off to the guards and tell them _nothing's _wrong, and I can waltz out the back door without a hitch."

"P- Please," Rachel panted, her cheek pressed against the floor. "Please, just _don't shoot_."

She felt the small point of applied pressure on her back waver a bit, then finally lift and vanish. Rachel clumsily got up and regained her balance, relief rushing back into her nerves and veins. It didn't take too long for it to drain back out.

_Knock_

_Knock_

_Knock._

Rachel froze, though the Joker remained relaxed.

_Knock_

_Knock._

"Wilson… Wilson, it's locked," a voice from the other side called out. "Miss Dawes? Are you in there?"

Neither of the two made the slightest noise. The sound of a group of men running towards the door increased in volume.

"Whoever is in there, please open the door," said some old hard voice that was unmistakably James Gordon.

From out of the corner of her eye, Rachel could see the Joker stepping back towards the back door ever so slowly.

"If you have Miss Dawes with you, I demand you open the door in five-"

Another step back.

"-four-"

Another.

"-three-"

Another.

"-two-"

Out of sight.

Rachel spun around, grabbing the Joker by the wrist once more and barging the back door open. The two of them fell into the thick, frigid snow, toppling over the police cones that once surrounded two outlines of bodies. Her panic replenished, Rachel pulled him up by the arm with all her remaining strength, and ran down the narrow alleyway to a car parked at the side of the road.

The police cars were empty – all of the units had gone inside the District Attorney building for support and to search more, conveniently enough. Rachel wrenched the car door of her Mercedes-Benz open (a rapid memory of Bruce haughtily comparing it to his Lamborghini passed here), practically tossing the Joker into the passenger's side and getting into the driver's seat. Without bothering for seatbelts or locking doors or fixed rear view mirrors, she sped away as fast as she could from the building.

"Where are we goin'?" the Joker asked as he pulled the jacket off.

"Home," Rachel answered almost robotically, too exhausted to show her fear. Reddened eyes focused on the road, she heard him shove the gun back into its holder in his pocket.

"You're doing a _lovely job," _a hiss in her ear reassured her, and in the seconds that passed Rachel wondered whether this was the worst or best thing she'd ever done in her life.


End file.
